Capabilities-Based Planning: The Road Ahead

19-21 October 2004
Institute for Defense Analyses
Alexandria, VA

Terms of Reference
(Updated 26 August 2004)

Background

The refinement of the evolving Capabilities-Based Planning (CBP) process continues within the Department of Defense (DoD).  In October, there will be a community-wide workshop on CBP principles and approaches that will provide an opportunity for planners and analysts throughout the Department to exchange concepts, acquire new ideas, and further the development of the Secretary’s CBP directive.

The FY 2006-11 Strategic Planning Guidance (SPG) calls on the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy to develop, by the fall of 2004, a strategy for institutionalizing CBP within the Defense Department.  This initiative will build upon existing efforts in the Department to transition to CBP.  The strategy will include policies, procedures, and a lexicon, and will apply to both future force and adaptive planning.  In addition, recommendations to better align joint analytical resources and to better manage models and simulations in support of CBP will be developed.  As the constituent parts of the strategy begin to mature, MORS members will have increased opportunities to assist in refining the process.

A successfully implemented CBP process will help DoD develop, within overall resource limits, a flexible force capable of responding to a wide spectrum of possible conflicts.  The new construct stresses joint solutions to problems, requires identifying risk tradeoffs within and across mission areas, and treats uncertainty explicitly.

Several allied countries have incorporated CBP into their force planning processes, and we will hear from some of them during the workshop.  A number of DoD-wide CBP initiatives support future force planning, the most significant being:

Identifying and assessing risk plays a major role in defense decision-making under CBP.  New processes and tools will be needed to describe and quantify the risks associated with DoD-wide decisions.  For many future decisions, this will require a comprehensive analysis of the entire defense program, for only with such a synoptic view can the Secretary determine an appropriate risk balance.

CBP will continue to refine the checks within the system to ensure that future capabilities and supporting force elements are integrated answers to defense needs.  This will require a much greater degree of collaboration among the services during the annual program formulation period.  CBP also will be supported by enhanced participation of the combatant commanders (COCOMs) in the planning process.  The COCOM staffs already participate in the establishment of near-term plans, and CBP has begun to engage these staffs in the process of long-term planning.

CBP also has an important role in adaptive planning—a broad category that ranges from crisis action planning to deliberate planning for potential future operations, and encompasses the entire spectrum of military operations.  This area is undergoing significant reform, with several major new initiatives under way, including one on Global Force Management and another incorporating CBP in the development of the Contingency Planning Guidance (CPG).

Goals and Objectives

The focus of the workshop is to help the analytical community prepare for Capabilities Based Planning. It will identify and showcase promising processes and developments, and describe areas for methodological improvement.

A rethinking of analytical processes will likely be needed to support CBP. This means that a different set of techniques may be needed, particularly to address the increased emphasis on characterizing risks due to uncertainties. Success in adapting department-wide analyses to focus on these broader issues will be a key driver for success of CBP as a whole. The conference plans to include examples of successful “CBP-flavored” analysis, or prototypes, that might be scaled to a DoD-wide process.

1. Inform the military operations research community of “where we are.” 
2. Identify ways to collaborate and cooperate to improve consistency—including with allies.
3. Review the lexicon and suggest changes. 
4. Identify emerging needs in theory, data, and methods-and suggest solutions.

Approach and Sequence of Events

a. Monday

The workshop will be preceded by an optional preparatory session on Monday afternoon, 18 October 2004 also at IDA.  Overviews of the lexicon, JCIDS, CPG, EPP, and the Analytic Agenda will be offered. The session is open to anyone who registers for either the full workshop or Plenary-only at no additional fee.    A rough agenda is in paragraph 10, below.  Workshop registration may be accomplished at 1200 that day for early arrivers.  Additional details will be sent to registrants in the future.

b. Tuesday - Plenary Session

c. Wednesday and Thursday - Working Groups and Tutorials.   Wednesday and Thursday will consist of working group meetings and tutorials, concluding with the working group brief-outs Thursday afternoon.

WG 1 - Methodologies for CBP (Unclassified)

Scope - This working group will focus on the models, simulations, and other quantitative decision tools used to perform analysis in a CBP environment.

Background - Challenges to DoD analytical tools have resulted due to not only recent changes in the Department’s planning process such as JCIDS, the Enhanced Planning Process (EPP), and the Analytic Agenda but also due to emphasis on key warfighting concepts such as effects based operations (EBO), special operations forces (SOF), information operations (IO), command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR).  WG 1 will start by reviewing the key concepts associated with CBP.  Next, it will review the analytical methods currently used to support CBP.  This will be followed by a session on identifying what is different – what new demands does CBP place on the analytical community.  Finally, the working group will explore what the analysis community needs to do to build a foundation to address these new challenges.

Tasks - WG 1 will conduct a broad-range discussion in two prime areas:

1. Current M&S activities and how they may be used by CBP.  Openness is a key feature of CBP.  This translates into analytical transparency in analysis.  The working group will address how to define and measure the transparency of models.

2. Unconventional methodologies may be of considerable use in CBP.  New techniques have emerged for assessing asymmetric warfare, unconventional operations, and other non-traditional military situations.  This WG will examine some of these new approaches and suggest potential applications to analysis that supports CBP.

WG 2 - Taxonomy, Lexicon and Implementation (Unclassified)

Scope - The underlying definitions, relationships and processes that define the use of Capabilities-Based Planning for defense decision making in the United States and allied countries.

Background - As the new taxonomy is established, the framework for conducting Capabilities-Based Planning will begin to take shape.  A hierarchical characterization of CBP subject areas will also help establish the relationships among the various CBP processes and goals.

Tasks - Compare allied approaches and concepts on Capabilities-Based Planning with our own.  Suggest metrics that measure how well CBP is being implemented in the DoD. Compare relationships with existing planning processes. Based on the above, suggest changes to the current definitions and taxonomy being used in the U.S.

WG 3 - The Application of CBP to Adaptive Planning. (Classified)

Scope - Processes that employ the new paradigm applied to crisis action or deliberate planning. 

Background - In the past, the planning process has been unable to respond to fast-paced real-world changes in the strategic picture.  As a result, many studies have been obsolete before they were delivered.  New requirements have been levied on the planning community to make this process more adaptive and responsive, better able to adjust to changing needs and emergent issues. Included in the discussion will be the current tools (CFAST, JICM, Seaway, etc.), case studies of adaptive planning process (successful or not), and descriptions of adaptive planning and its unique requirements.

WG 4 - The Application of CBP to Future Force Planning. (Classified)

Scope - All OSD- and JS-level processes that employ the new paradigm for future force planning.

Background - Transformation in force planning includes important new concepts.  These include the incorporation of fiscal constraints and risk at all stages of the decision process.

WG 5 - The Application of CBP to Acquisition Management (Unclassified)

Scope - The transformed acquisition process, and the supporting elements of military modeling (cost and effectiveness models). 

Background - Transformation in the acquisition community is an important part of the development of the CBP process.  New tools and processes will be developed in support of acquisition in a capabilities context.  These include the use of roadmaps, and the role of systems engineering to answer important acquisition issues.  This working group will focus on understanding needs and developing recommendations for an acquisition process that will oversee the development and fielding of capabilities. 

Tasks - Discuss a capabilities approach to acquisition. Identify and discuss new and modified processes and tools to support its implementation.  Identify data needs.  Suggest recommendations for augmenting current acquisition practice.  

Synthesis Group.  (Unclassified) This working group will take a broad view, identifying high-level issues across the domains of CBP.  The group is responsible for developing an integrated perspective of the Workshop and capturing crosscutting insights and lessons learned that might not be apparent in individual working groups.  It also will help establish consistent definitions.

Attendance

Products

There will be up to five specific products generated from this workshop:

Proponents of the Workshop

Planning and Organizing Committee

Working Group Chairs, Co-Chairs and Assistants

WG 1 - Methodologies
Co-Chairs - Bart Bennett and Greg McIntyre
Assistants - Lt Col Darren Durkee, USAF, Gary Mullin and Mark Gallagher

WG 2 - Taxonomy, Lexicon and Data
Co-Chairs - Charles Werchado and Clay Bowen
Assistants - Ben Taylor and CDR Todd Kiefer

WG 3 - Application to Adaptive Planning
Co-Chairs - Tim Hoffman OSD/P and Bob Clemence
Assistants - Kathleen Conley, Jim Stevens and Jim Pasquarette

WG 4 - Application to Future Force Planning
Co-Chairs - Jim Thomason and Kirk Yost
Assistants - Pat McKenna and Chris Morey (TRAC)

WG 5 - Application to Acquisition Management
Co-Chairs - Kristen Baldwin and LTC Bob Larsen
Assistants - Dan Maxwell and Phil Walsh

Synthesis
Chair - Greg Parnell, FS
Co-Chairs - Stu Starr, FS (tentative), Tom Allen, Gene Visco, FS, Wayne Hughes, FS, Todd Calhoun, Bert Head, Col Jerry Diaz, Paul Davis, Roy Rice, FS

Monday Preliminary Session

Administration

Name: Ms. Natalie Kelly, MORS, 1703 N. Beauregard St, Suite 450, Alexandria, VA 22311

Dates: 19- 21 October 2004 (Preliminary Session on 18 October.)

Location: Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA)

Fee: $210 government, $420 all others

Attendance: 100-120

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED except for two working groups that will be held at SECRET/ NOFORN level.

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