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Figure 1. Mission area analysis |
Document created: 27 August 04
Air University Review, November-December
1970
Major General Donavon F.
Smith
The Honorable Charles J. Hitch wrote in 1960:
It is misleading to say that primacy in military research and development can give us only lead time. This may be enough to prevent or “win” a war, and, for a nation on the strategic defense, is essential to avoid defeat.
Lead time is normally measured in years and infers a capability advantage or disadvantage of one nation vis-à-vis another. For example, the United States is “x” years ahead of the Soviet Union in a moon-landing capability. The lead time referred to by Dr. Hitch is acquired through the aggressive pursuit of a sophisticated research and technology program, which in turn results in weapon systems with capabilities to deter or defeat potential enemies.
Ten years later, looking into the next decade, we see a period characterized even more by the continuing exponential increase in scientific and technical knowledge. It promises to be an age in which systems derived from applied technology will provide improved means of waging war but in which costs will rapidly accelerate, reflecting the increased complexity. However, at the same time, we see very clearly a projected fiscal environment in which the harnessing of technology to military needs will have to be carefully planned in order to take full advantage of our limited research, development, test, and evaluation (RDT&E) resources.
In the Directorate of Operational Requirements and Development Plans we see as our major challenge today the process of advocating and initiating development of those systems that satisfy our operational requirements over the next decade. That process we call development planning.
Development planning as performed in this directorate is neither a mechanized process nor a simple one described in a single document. Instead, we view it as “a way of doing business.” Development planning as we envision it involves every element of the Air Staff, each of the major operational commands, the Air Force Systems Command, and the Air Force Logistics Command. The genesis of our activity occurs in two separate but related areas: (1) stated operational requirements from the users and (2) analyses of current or projected force capabilities.
First, we are keenly aware of the “needs” of the operational commands. As previous articles in the Review have described, this directorate is the Air Staff focal point for all activity to satisfy command-stated needs.1 These normally come to Headquarters as a Required Operational Capability (ROC) document, submitted under provisions of Air Force Regulation 57–1, “Policies, Responsibilities, and Procedures for Obtaining New and Improved Operational Capabilities.” We are charged with validating the requirement, weighing alternative solutions, and advocating those solutions which make the greatest contribution to force effectiveness within the projected fiscal constraints. This is not an easy task. Currently we have over six hundred individual ROC’S, which, if programs were initiated to satisfy all of them, would cost several times the available RDT&E and investment dollars. The task is made more formidable by the fact that these are not frivolous “wish lists” but deficiencies that a major air commander has considered serious enough to document. Our development planning provides the basis for responding to stated requirements; it provides a means of evaluating alternative RDT&E and acquisition programs, with their concomitant costs, to determine those areas which offer the greatest potential for maintaining or increasing force effectiveness.
Command statements of need are not the only driving force leading to new system development programs. The statement of Air Force objectives in the USAF Planning Concepts, mission evaluation studies such as those conducted by the Assistant Chief of Staff for Studies and Analysis and by industry, and studies of future technological trends and options—all these can lead to RDT&E programs that address projected force deficiencies. These studies are more closely associated with identifying RDT&E programs that can culminate in acquisition of weapon systems five to ten years in the future. On the other hand, the inputs from major air commands are more clearly correlated with near-term RDT&E. There is need for a link between the two inputs, to provide an efficacious generation of RDT&E programs. We are looking forward to the TAC 85 study currently under way in the Tactical Air Command as a major contributor to defining where we should be going in long-range tactical force development.
Development planning provides a framework for selecting the studies and hardware programs to be pursued over the next ten to fifteen years. Hence, our development planning efforts form the basis for most RDT&E and acquisition activities.
The general methodology we employ to support effective advocacy of solutions to required operational capabilities is based on an understanding of development planning as an iterative process within and between the Air Staff and the major air commands. The development planning structure is directly related to mission areas.
the iterative process
When I speak of development planning as an iterative process within the Air Staff, I am addressing those specific staff functions which directly affect and control the development of the Air Force of the future. There is no one function that comes first, since all of these functions relate to and depend upon one another. We look to the USAF Planning Concepts to set the stage for developing an objective force structure and for comparable planning efforts by the major commands. Forces derived on the basis of threat estimates and doctrine alone are not practical because of the impossibly high requirements for fiscal resources as well as technical advancements; therefore, USAF Planning Concepts also includes the implications of technology and alludes to our fiscal constraints. In addition, the Air Staff conducts program and budget exercises designed to tailor our forces within the DOD fiscal guidance; however, these efforts are meaningful only if there is some overall planning framework within which the program decisions can be compared. Our planning methodology provides such a. framework, in effect closing the gap between the broad guidance found in the USAF Planning Concepts document and the hard-core realities of fiscal and force exercises. The final element of the iterative process is the forecast and pursuit of the technology, which provides effective development options for the next decade.
Thus, development planning represents a continuous dialogue among planning concepts, force structure analyses, program and budget exercises, and analyses of those technologies and weapon systems developments which offer the greatest contribution to the Air Force.
mission area framework
In accomplishing this iterative process, we have begun to utilize an ordering of standard Air Force mission areas. Quite simply, the mission area approach consists of arranging the parts of the development planning problem according to aggregations of Air Force tasks. This serves several purposes. First, mission areas provide perspective on the USAF “job.” They provide an interface and transition between the broad mission categories in the program-budget system and the detailed task descriptions found in USAF manuals. Second, mission areas provide a basis for analysis of requirements and assessment of alternatives. This basis is essential to laying out the various decision elements, such as cost schedules and force impacts, for the decision-makers. Finally, mission areas contribute to the dialogue between various staff agencies and major air commanders by establishing a common framework of requirements, analysis, and decision elements against which programs can be formulated and the constraints and risks can be evaluated.
The mission areas being used in our current development planning efforts are as follows:
Strategic offense Strategic defense Command and control communications Reconnaissance and surveillance Intelligence Training Air superiority Interdiction Close air support Special operations Airlift Rescue
Mission support, including base security, navigation and landing aids, weather systems support aircraft, etc., which provide across-the-board support of the other missions.
These mission areas were not selected casually. They are representative of the jobs the Air Force has to do. Their basis can be found in the USAF Planning Concepts, force structure studies, roles and missions documents, and Air Force manuals. The mission areas give recognition to the tasks assigned to the Air Force and, at the same time, represent a way of categorizing the initiation, validation, and resolution of the major air command ROC’S. Furthermore, the mission areas have proved to be a useful means of grouping RDT&E programs and statements of requirements so that their total impact can be directly compared.
Within each mission area it was necessary to further define the job to be done in order to provide a basis for analysis. Hence a number of subtasks were identified. The tasks or functions are unique to each mission area and further structure the job to be done as a basis for evaluating system effectiveness. An example of the task breakout of the strategic offensive area is as follows:
Launch readiness and prelaunch survivability Launch survivability Penetration of area defenses Penetration of terminal defenses Weapon delivery Command and control communications.
Moreover, in this particular mission area, strategic offense, the tasks are further divided into manned and unmanned capabilities.
Having identified the specific requirements for each mission area, we must delineate those basic technology efforts needed to provide specific weapon system capabilities in one or more mission areas. The development planning process can be used to formulate guidance as to what technology efforts need to be pursued. Guidance is provided on research, exploratory development, and nonsystems advanced development, with particular emphasis on space technology.
mission area approach
The mission area approach to development planning focuses on four simple questions:
What is the job to be done?
What is our current capability to do the job?
What are our required operational capabilities?
What are our program solutions?
The job to be done is defined by investigation of the objectives of our forces within each mission area. These objectives can be derived from a review of the strategic and tactical guidance as stated in the Joint Strategic Objectives Plan or other sources, e.g., Fiscal Guidance, where national policy and objectives are enunciated. After obtaining an understanding of objectives and considering the rationale for these objectives, we can derive specific tasks for each mission area. Additionally, the estimated threat for each mission area is identified as a means of evaluating our ability to accomplish our mission objectives.
Our current ability to do the job is determined by study of our present and programmed systems and how they would operate in a variety of operational situations. Major air command ROC’S also provide the commander’s viewpoint of his existent operational capability. A thorough review of operational test and evaluation exercises, as conducted on individual weapon systems or joint test, further illuminates the current capability. And Air Staff personnel have a wealth of operational experience with which to support the evaluation of our existing capability.
The next step is a comparison of the job to be done and existing capabilities. The comparison will be sensitive to the measures of effectiveness used, i.e., tanks destroyed per sortie, expected fatalities, etc. It is incumbent upon us to obtain the most practical measures of effectiveness. To this end we look to other Air Staff elements, such as the Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Studies and Analysis, for aid in developing useful criteria. The deficiencies between our existing capabilities and the job to be done define our required operational capabilities.
With a definitized statement of need, we then turn our attention to the alternative means of meeting the requirement. We seek to identify all conceptual systems that can provide the required capability for each mission area. The modifications of existing systems are also considered. After an exhaustive search to identify all possible alternatives, the development of a program solution can be initiated. This is a most complex task, for it not only must seek the optimum solution within each mission area but also must identify the best solution for the total Air Force mission. Again the identification of the optimum solution is accomplished through appropriate criteria. The development planning effort places the total Air Force mission solutions in perspective with the resources required. Advocacy of the final product will address all the factors of technological risk—cost, time, planning, doctrine, force structure, and total budget—thus permitting an effective bridging of the gap between operational requirements and operational systems.
an analytic model
We have formulated a symbolic model representing the essential elements that must be treated explicitly (and perhaps analytically) if we are to establish a complete understanding of the relationship between expected capabilities and requirements for new developments. In the model (Figure 1) we depict the effectiveness of a force comprised of specific systems to achieve a given objective over time. The measure of effectiveness is described in quantifiable terms on the vertical axis with the desired level indicated by the horizontal line near the top. Deviations from this desired level of effectiveness are depicted by the force “drawdown” curve, which traces the extent of our expected operational deficiency year by year. Variations in operational deficiencies could occur as a result of several major factors, e.g., an increased threat, a changing mission requirement, obsolescence of the force. The dashed line on the chart depicts the improved force effectiveness available with the introduction of a new capability. This is achieved through RDT&E efforts leading to an initial operational capability (IOC) for a new system or modification which corresponds to the point in time at which the improvement curve begins its rise (see horizontal lines near bottom).
Figure 1. Mission area analysis
To meet our desired operational objectives and thus eliminate major deficiencies, we must evaluate the increased effectiveness provided by the introduction of a new system or capability into the force. Those RDT&E programs which lead to systems giving us the greatest overall improved mission effectiveness and which can be carried out within our technological and fiscal constraints are selected as our desired program alternatives. This kind of mission area analysis provides a way of thinking through our requirements problem. It is essential not only in understanding the effectiveness of our force in an entire mission area but also in evaluating the contribution of alternative systems to that force.
One final element of the mission area framework that deserves further discussion is the need to develop meaningful and agreed-to measures of effectiveness within each of the mission areas. Currently only the strategic offense, strategic defense, and the strategic task within airlift have well-defined quantitative criteria for evaluating our capability to meet specific mission objectives. Current mission area studies have identified a wide range of criteria used in individual studies, and yet these different criteria do not provide the desired insight to overall force effectiveness across the entire mission area spectrum. We will continue to focus some of our development planning studies onto the need for more useful measures of effectiveness, especially in the tactical mission areas.
While I have characterized this discussion with the term “methodology,” in simplest terms what I am describing is a working process in which we are ordering our requirements and their program solutions to lend perspective to our development planning efforts. It is this perspective which I consider to be the significant gain from our current way of doing business.
To put the mission area planning process into operation, we have taken a number of specific actions. While the primary emphasis is on structuring a framework for consistent logical analysis of future program needs, certain products are utilized on a continual basis as planning and guidance tools.
mission area studies
For each of the thirteen mission areas, we are formulating a study that is intended to be relatively long-range and enduring in nature. The purpose of these studies is to provide an overview of each mission area as the perspective for formulating specific concept studies, capability master plans, and program guidance. These are primarily in-house efforts and are accomplished by the Directorate of Operational Requirements and Development Plans (AFRDQ) and personnel from our Federal Contract Research Center, Analytic Services Inc. (ANSER). The outline for these studies follows much the same analysis format shown earlier, in that each concentrates on the job to be done, the current ability to do the job, required operational capability, and proposed solutions. The emphasis is on macroanalysis and the interrelation of the various tasks to be accomplished. Three of the prime features of these papers are
—the attempt to synthesize a basic measure or measures of merit for each mission area,
—the synthesis of many studies that have already been accomplished for each mission area, and
—the accumulation of data that can be consistently used for analysis and planning.
These studies are intended to identify broad areas of deficiencies and provide the means to interrelate proposed concepts and programs that address the deficiencies.
The mission area studies are iterative in nature in that they provide a framework and the guidance for detailed analysis and programs in each mission area and in turn use these efforts as inputs for reaccomplishing the mission area study. Some unique display techniques for providing perspective across several of the tasks and systems in a mission area have been developed by the ANSER team. The life cycle of these studies as a formal document is in tune with the budget/program requirements; however, a majority of them will remain in the draft stage, useful as overview and as guidance documents but not recognized as official Air Force positions. Even in this form, they are absolutely essential to formulating the specific products that follow.
system and capability concept studies
System and capability concept studies are accomplished primarily to define how we should satisfy a deficiency. They normally follow a mission evaluation that defines what must be done, or they may be undertaken directly in response to a formal statement of required operational capability. We rely primarily on the Air Force Systems Command to accomplish these studies in response to guidance provided by Hq USAF. These studies, formulated within the overall mission area framework, are intended to be more specific than the mission area studies and to address specific alternative solutions to projected problem areas.
Related efforts not directly a part of the development planning framework include:
(1) Concept Formulations/Technical Development Plans. This document compares alternative concepts and provides the rationale for selecting the preferred alternative by use of accepted measures of effectiveness.
(2) RDT&E Program Summary (Form 1634). This document identifies proposed and ongoing technological efforts at Air Force Systems Command and provides the development planner with current status of technology, which he can feed into the planning process.
(3) Cost and Feasibility Studies. These studies relate to specific program proposals by identifying the resources needed to develop and acquire the proposed program and providing a firm indication of the technical feasibility of accomplishing the proposed program.
Air Force Systems Command also conducts presystem, system, and technological application studies that contribute directly to the overall development planning effort.
capabilities master plans (CMP)
In addition to the concept studies that are primarily designed to identify new or improved capabilities, we are generating a series of documents to provide specific development planning information for individual systems, such as the F-4, B-52, etc. These functional CMP’S also address system categories such as air intercept missiles or air-to-ground missiles. They may be thought of as second-level planning documents. The Capabilities Master Plan is formalized to the extent of attaining Air Staff and major command recognition of the basic direction in which we are moving with each of our major system or systems capabilities. The CMP is intended primarily for use with inventory systems; however, it is formulated to include a part of what is expected in new force applications. The CMP is developed with regard for real cost constraints and provides a means to structure an orderly and consistent program for improved capability within the mission area framework. It is not only a planning document but serves the added purpose of being a program management tool. It assists in structuring modification programs for existing systems and aids in the comparison of alternative systems. All this leads to an improved capability that can be related to other mission area requirements.
The old bugaboo of fiscal constraints is an extremely important factor in each master plan. If all the desired modifications to all systems were to be accomplished, the required funding would far exceed any reasonable projection of available modification funds. The individual master plans formulated within the mission area framework provide a means of measuring the total requirements against project funding and of trading off alternatives within and between mission areas.
The goal of our development planning efforts is to provide force and program inputs; that is, dollars must be allocated to RDT&E and procurement programs in order to bring into being any of the capabilities advocated in our development planning activities. I want to emphasize that we see program guidance as an end product of our efforts, not as the input. Our whole methodology is based on the premise that we can measure, even if only qualitatively, the force impact of structuring RDT&E, new system acquisition, and modification programs; hence, we are able to provide the guidance leading to the most cost-effective force. Primarily we are concerned with the out-year capabilities we will have in the force as the result of those hard decisions we must make today.
We propose not only alternative programs but alternative funding levels and the force capability impact of each. These are structured within the mission framework and based on the best analysis we can bring to bear in our mission area studies, concept studies, and master plan efforts.
Our participation in the various decision elements—such as the Force Structure Committee, Program Review Committee, and Air Staff Board and Panel—provides the means for implementing our way of doing business. What we bring to these groups is a framework for decision-making. In turn, we receive guidance based upon an examination of the whole force problem, rather than merely a chain of decisions on individual programs. This increases the perspective which we bring to bear on our mission area analyses. Not only are immediate force implications developed; long-range force and fiscal implications are brought more clearly into focus through these development planning efforts.
In his cited article, Major General William G. Moore, Jr., cautioned against the belief that “black magic” is involved in our development and acquisition sequence. I too want to make it clear that we are not attempting to pull rabbits out of a hat. What I have been talking about is a process, a way of doing business, that involves every element of the Air Staff and each of our major commands. Ours certainly is not a new attempt, for we have embarked on our course in development planning fully aware of the many studies and attempts that have preceded us. I see our approach as a viable means to making some sense out of the “requirements jungle.” It is one in which we must inject some order if the Air Force is to move out in the decade ahead with weapon system capabilities that make major contributions to force effectiveness. It is a process that can add perspective for the “blue suit” decision-makers who must make the hard decisions that face us in the fiscal environment projected for the next five to ten years. This approach is well under way, and through it I feel we in the research, development, and acquisition community can, along with our Air Force-wide counterparts, make a dynamic contribution to future Air Force effectiveness.
Hq United States Air Force
1. Colonel Geoffrey Cheadle, “What Is an Operational Requirement?” Air University Review, XIX, 2 (January-February 1968), 44–50 and Major General William G. Moore, Jr., “Equipping Tomorrow’s Force,” Air University Review, XXI, 1 (November-December 1969), 69–76.
Major General Donavon F. Smith is Director of Operational Requirements and Development Plans, DCS/R&D, Hq USAF. Previously, he was Vice Commander, Ninth Air Force, and then Commander, Nineteenth Air Force. In 1966-68 he was Chief, Air Force Advisory Group, Military Assistance Command, Vietnam. During World War II he commanded the 61st Fighter Squadron, ETO, and became an ace. He has been an RAF exchange officer and had assignments with Strategic Air Command, Air Defense Command, NORAD, and SHAPE. General Smith is a graduate of National War College and Advanced Management School, Harvard.
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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