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Agent-Based
Models and Other Analytic Tools in Support of Stability Operations
SAIC, McLean, VA
25-27 October 2005
Terms
of Reference
Background
Traditionally, stability operations were
considered by many to be to the mechanism of transitioning from a full warfare
footing to a peaceful situation. Joint
forces use dominant maneuver and precision joint fires to achieve military
strategic and operational objectives, culminating in conflict termination.
In this viewpoint, stability operations are conducted as needed to ensure
a smooth shift to the desired end state of the Joint Task Force commander and to
relieve suffering. The goal is to ensure that the threat (military and
political) does not resurrect itself.
Traditional offensive operations are primary in this perspective;
stability operations are secondary.
The world may have changed, however.
The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon have thrust the United States into the
Global War on Terrorism (GWOT). As
a result, the United States has joined the rest of the world by entering into a
new age of instability. Stability
operations can no longer be relegated to a secondary level of importance.
The United States (U.S.) Department of Defense (DoD) needs to consider
the use of modeling techniques to assess the emergence and development of
stability operations as part of the DoD effort in nation-building.
DoD uses simulation models to support its
decision making process. These
models help evaluate war plans against adversaries, assist in assessing what
equipment to acquire, determine the best combination of forces, determine the
best combination and use of weapons, and much more.
Since it is nearly impossible to conduct actual physical experiments to
determine the effectiveness of war plans, force designs, or weapon system
capabilities in actual conflict, the DoD relies on these simulation models to
capture significant insights that enable senior leadership to make informed
decisions.
A new and stimulating area of combat models
involves Agent-Based Models (ABM). The
concept is to use multi-agent-based software tools to examine the relationship
between numerous input variables and output measures.
The self-adaptive nature of some of these models may facilitate broad
exploration of battlefield scenarios and permit the possibility of gaining
substantial insights into emergent behaviors on the battlefield.
This may be especially pertinent for a non-linear battlefield with
distributed tactical units. The
potential application of ABM to stability operations should be investigated.
According to the U.S. Army’s FM 3-07 Stability
Operations and Support Operations,
“Stability operations promote and protect U.S. national
interests by influencing the threat, political, and information dimensions of
the operational environment through a combination of peacetime developmental,
cooperative activities and coercive actions in response to crisis. Army forces
accomplish stability goals through engagement and response. The military
activities that support stability operations are diverse, continuous, and
often long-term. Their purpose is to promote and sustain regional and global
stability.”
In Joint Publication 3-0, Doctrine for Joint
Operations revision first draft (RFD), stability operations are defined as
“an overarching term
encompassing specific types of developmental, cooperative, or coercive
security cooperation and deterrence activities, small-scale operations, and/or
missions that promote local or regional normalcy and protect U.S. interests
abroad. Stability operations may
be conducted in all operational environments and during all phases of a
campaign or major operation."
Finally, Joint Forces
Command, in Stability Operations Concepts and Capabilities Emerging From
JFCOM/Joint Experimentation, states that
“Stability
Operations are activities conducted by military and other government
components to establish, reestablish or support a foreign government’s
ability to assure rule of law and internal security, to provide basic human
services (healthcare, water, electricity, education), and to protect its
borders and promote its foreign interests including cooperation with regional
and international partners and deterrence of potential aggressors.”
It is clear that stability operations can be stand-alone
operations or part of a campaign or major combat operation and it may be that
stability operations will become primary in the GWOT strategy and traditional
offensive operations become secondary. Globalization,
the unfettered spread of free market capitalism (and the institutions required
to sustain it), will probably continue to place tremendous strains on
populations at risk, on the governments that cannot provide for the basic needs
of their people, and on wealthy societies that will be forced to deal with
growing problems of religious and ideological radicalization, communal violence,
illegal immigration, and the marginalization of international institutions.
It seems then, that our most likely adversaries will have one or more of
the following traits: ideologically
driven; networked; technologically sophisticated; and non-state actors operating
with either tacit or active support of states or ostensibly legitimate
international or trans-national organizations.
The non-linear battlefield now figures in the list of
consideration factors for planning, organizing, training, and equipping our
fighting forces. At the same time,
tactical emphasis shifts towards distributed operations to cope with the new
environment. Distributed operations
are non-linear and deploy tactical units across the depth and breadth of a
battlespace in order to maximize opportunities to achieve favorable intelligence
driven engagements. Massing forces
and pre-planning voluminous fires are not the critical enablers for distributed
operations. The critical enablers
are a robust, easily accessible information structure and prompt, responsive,
precision fires.
Purpose, Goals, and Objectives
The military establishment of the United States is
transforming itself. The
requirement to conduct stability operations is part of that transformation.
The military operations research community is transforming itself as
well. Conducting analyses in
support of stability operations is not an area that the military operations
research community has focused on in the recent past.
Much of the current effort of the military operations research community
is directed towards supporting decision-making during the tumultuous
transformation process. Some of the
operations research effort is directed towards developing analytical
methodologies that will be needed after the transformation has taken place.
During transformations such as the one we are going through,
it can be expected that several related analytical initiatives will take place
in different organizations throughout the military operations research
community. Although the initiatives
are being undertaken, for the most part, independently, it is essential they
proceed from a common foundation if there is to be any meaningful integration of
their results in the future.
Of
particular interest is determining the value and benefits of ABM in supporting
military analyses and decisions, especially those relating to distributed
operations. These models were used
in limited and sporadic instances, but the military operations analysis
community still needs to examine the advantages and disadvantages of ABM.
The Military Operations Research Society (MORS)
has facilitated the transformation process by conducting recent special meetings
such as
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Combat Analyst: Deploying
Quantitative Support to the Combatant Commander,
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Decision Aids / Support to Joint Operations Planning,
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How Cognitive and Behavioral Factors Influence Command and
Control,
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Operations Analysis Support to Network Centric Operations,
and
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| The Global War on Terrorism: Analytic Support,
Tools and Metrics of Assessment. |
These special meetings have assembled practitioners and users
of military operations research for professional exchange and peer criticism,
leading to a broader and more common understanding of what has been done and
what should be done.
The purpose of this workshop is to continue the
trend towards this common understanding by bringing together analysts working on
projects directly or indirectly related to ABM and stability operations.
The goals of this workshop are to determine the capabilities that ABM
provides for military analyses and to identify techniques and methodologies that
show promise for conducting analyses in support of stability operations.
Specific
objectives are to:
1.
Examine
the state-of-the-art of ABM and other modeling and simulation techniques to
identify likely applications to military operations with a focus on
stability operations
2.
Survey
the progress to date (or lack of progress), in the context of stability
operations, towards developing metrics to
i.
Measure
progress toward the attainment of operational objectives (not limited to
military objectives)
ii.
Assist
the decision maker in determining tradeoffs for the allocation of scarce
resources
and
produce an initial list of metrics and measures of effectiveness applicable to
stability operations for eventual inclusion in a MORS publication
3.
Review
analyses and analytic approaches that pertain to stability operations,
including those conducted via distributed operations, in order to identify
promising approaches and areas needing further work
Approach
The workshop will take place at the SAIC Conference Center,
1710 SAIC Drive, McLean, VA from 25 to 27 October 2005 and will consist of three
parts. There will be an opening
plenary session, followed by three simultaneous working group sessions.
It will end with a closing plenary session.
Fees are $260 for U.S. Government participants and $520 for
non-U.S. Government participants.
The opening plenary session will take place on Tuesday
morning, 25 October. The opening
plenary session will consist of a keynote speaker and other speakers, perhaps in
a panel format. The thrust of the
opening plenary session will be stability operations, not analysis.
In order to analyze stability operations, analysts first need to
understand what they are. Understanding involves, for example, military missions
typically involved in stability operations, along with some of the objectives of
these missions. Stability
operations will be presented in two contexts.
The first context will be the applicability and role of stability
operations in GWOT. The second
context will be the operational challenges in carrying out stability operations
in a Joint, coalition, multi-national, and interagency environment.
There will be three working groups.
The thrust of their sessions will be analysis.
The working groups will orient on the three areas of analytic interest
stated in the objectives of the mini-symposium:
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Working Group I – Agent-Based Modeling and Simulation for
Stability Operations
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Working Group II – Metrics for Stability Operations
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| Working Group III – Analytic Support to
Stability (Including Distributed) Operations |
The groups will meet
during Tuesday afternoon, 25 October, all day Wednesday, 26 October, and during
Thursday morning, 27 October. Working
Group Chairpersons will assemble analysts who are, or were recently engaged in
projects in the specified areas of analytical interest.
The analysts will share their experiences, successes, failures, and
results. The goal of the working
groups is to determine the potential applicability (or non-applicability) of the
discussed techniques and methodologies towards analyzing stability operations.
Each working group will prepare a report summarizing description and
scope of the areas of analytical interest and the working group’s opinions
concerning its role in conducting analyses in support of stability operations.
There is, of course, overlap among the working groups.
This is intentional and desirable because different groups will have
different points of view. There will also be a synthesis group to identify techniques
and methodologies discussed during the working group sessions that show
exceptional promise for conducting analyses in support of stability operations.
The synthesis group will evaluate the usefulness of a full workshop on
ABM. In addition, the synthesis
group will look for other operations research issues amenable to follow-on
examination in a MORS workshop.
The closing plenary session will be hosted by the synthesis
group on Thursday afternoon, 27 October, and will feature presentations by each
of the working groups. Each working
group presentation will summarize what was accomplished in that working group
for the benefit of the analysts in the other working groups.
The synthesis group will comment on each working group’s presentation
and set forth its recommended issues for follow-on examination, if there are
any. It is important that ample
time be set aside for questions and answers.
The primary products of this workshop will be a
written report on the results and brief to the MORS Sponsors.
There will also be a PHALANX article and a presentation at the 74th
MORS Symposium.
MORS Workshop Organizing Committee
Co-Chairs
Colonel
Gregory Reuss, gregory.reuss@usmc.mil
Colonel George Stone, george.stone@us.army.mil
Technical Co-Chairs
LTC
Scott Schutzmeister, scott.schutzmeister@hqda.army.mil
Steve Stephens, cortez.stephens@usmc.mil
Ted Smyth, Ted.Smyth@jhuapl.edu
Greg Keethler, gregory.keethler@lmco.com
Brian Engler, brian@mors.org
Natalie Kelly, natalie@mors.org
Maj Mark Revor, mark.revor@usmc.mil
Maj Peter L. Poppe, peter.poppe@usmc.mil
Dr. Richard Deckro, Richard.Deckro@afit.edu
Maj Bill Hallahan, william.hallahan@usmc.mil
Working Group I
LTC Jeff
Schamburg, Jeffrey-schamburg@us.army.mil
Dr. Gary Horne, gary.horne.ctr@usmc.mil
Working Group II
Bill
Wright, william.wright@usmc.mil
Prof Dave Davis, ddavis@gmu.edu
MAJ Victor Wiley, Victor.Wiley@pentagon.af.mil
Working Group III
Mary
McDonald, mmcdonald@spa.com
MAJ Eric Hansen, eric.hansen@us.army.mil
Dennis Guzik, dguzik@spa.com
Captain Wolf, wolfes@hqmc.usmc.mil
Synthesis Group
Dr. Mike
Bailey, michael.bailey@usmc.mil
LTC
Tom Cioppa, thomas.cioppa@us.army.mil
Dear
Colleague Letter
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