OOTW Force Design Tools

This report documents refined requirements for tools to aid the process of force design in Operations Other Than War (OOTWs). It recommends actions for the creation of one tool and work on other tools relating to mission planning. It also identifies the governmental agencies and commands with interests in each tool, from whom should come the user advisory groups overseeing the respective tool development activities. The understanding of OOTWs and their analytical support requirements has matured to the point where action can be taken in three areas: force design, collaborative analysis, and impact analysis. While the nature of the action and the length of time before complete results can be expected depends on the area, in each case the action should begin immediately. Force design for OOTWs is not a technically difficult process. Like force design for combat operations, it is a process of matching the capabilities of forces against the specified and implied tasks of the operation, considering the constraints of logistics, transport and force availabilities. However, there is a critical difference that restricts the usefulness of combat force design tools for OOTWs: the combat tools are built to infer non-combat capability requirements from combat capability requirements and cannot reverse the direction of the inference, as is required for OOTWs. Recently, OOTWs have played a larger role in force assessment, system effectiveness and tradeoff analysis, and concept and doctrine development and analysis. In the first Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), each of the Services created its own OOTW force design tool. Unfortunately, the tools address different parts of the problem and do not coordinate the use of competing capabilities. These tools satisfied the immediate requirements of the QDR, but do not provide a long-term cost-effective solution